Category: 2015
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Woman Who Shot at Home Depot Shoplifters Vows to Never Help Anyone Again - The New York Times
Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez of Michigan, who had been a passerby when she noticed the commotion, lost her gun-carrying permit and got 18 months’ probation.
The NY Times reports this without comment. This crazy woman shot at people who were suspected of shoplifting. Not murder, not terrorism. Shoplifting. And the lesson she says she’s learned is, “I’ll never help anyone again.”
Revenge of the Prequels
Well, this is more like it. It's far from perfect, but Revenge of the Sith is far and away the best of the three prequels.
And that is largely because it has a story that mostly makes sense, and isn’t too confusing. Sure, there are still plot holes, and flaws in the motivation; but overall it holds together pretty well.
Still not as well as any of the original trilogy, of course.
The biggest point that doesn’t work for me is that we don’t see why Anakin has any connection with Palpatine. He goes over to the latter far too easily. I don’t so much mean his falling to the Dark Side; that was on the cards at least since he murdered the Sandpeople in Clones. I mean the fact that Palpatine was suddenly asking him to spy on the Jedi Council, while the Council were equally-suddenly talking about his closeness to Palpatine. We had seen none of this.
I’ve been reading a lot about all this lately, and I gather that much is made clearer in the ancillary material: novels, comics, the Clone Wars series that was made around the same time. But even if that is so, it means the movies fail. A movie has to be able to stand on its own. You can’t expect the viewer to have read around the subject or watched spinoff series. You can just barely rely on them having seen the immediately-prior films.
Compare and contrast the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example. You can watch The Avengers without having seen any of the prior films. Or enjoy Agents of SHIELD without having seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier, for example. If you have seen the related material then it enhances the whole. But any element can stand without the others.
The love story between Anakin and Padmé remains unconvincing, and Padmé’s death… well, I had gained the impression that she had died in childbirth, which seemed implausible in such a technologically-advanced society. In fact she died of a broken heart, or just gave up the ghost, or something. Which would be more plausible (if still not very) had she not just given birth. It seems more likely that a new mother would tend to fight for life to protect her babies. She died because the plot needed her to, in the end. If, as a creator, you have to do that kind of thing, you should at least find a more convincing way to do it.
Anyway, now I’ve seen all of the Star Wars movies, and I’m ready for The Force Awakens. Which is good, because I’ll be seeing it in about 30 hours.
Hell and Heaven
We come to the end of what I can now confidently say was my favourite series of new Doctor Who so far. No matter how good it was when it all came back with Chris Ecc (as we still like to call him in my family); how much we liked David Tennant; how manically brilliant Matt Smith was from day one: Peter Capaldi was on fire this season, and Stephen Moffat is at the top of his game as showrunner.
Were this last pair as good as “The Empty Child”/“The Doctor Dances” or “Blink”? It’s hard to say definitively, because those were so shockingly good when they hit us. But I think in time we’ll say so. I don’t doubt that Capaldi and the production team will win BAFTAs this year, and I’m sure that one of the last two will get the Hugo.
Awards may not mean that much (though let’s face it, they do) but when you see an award-worthy performance, or read something that you know is likely to win, that deserves to win – you know you’ve experienced something special.
And we experienced something very special in this season of Doctor Who And particularly in the last three episodes.
I just read a foolish comment on a Tor.com post about how great Capaldi is. It said, in effect, “That episode was only about the gender & skin-colour switching regeneration.” Yes, that was it: it was about that one thing and nothing else.
Seriously, though, that was a nice touch.
One thing I haven’t seen or heard mentioned is how terrified the Time Lords were of him – well, Rassilon, at least: one guy, and they send a vast floating gun platform to bring him in. Of course, it turns out that Rassilon was right to be afraid.
One thing about this episode and more importantly, the previous, seems to be causing people some confusion. The Doctor didn’t spend two billion years (or whatever) in the clockwork castle. Two billion years worth of copies of him – each with some awareness of its past iterations, triggered by the word “bird” – go through a near-identical experience.
Though Hell Bent proves that even The Doctor – or Stephen Moffat – is confused by this.
Mind you, the planet on which the castle is built does experience all that time, we must assume, as The Doctor observes how the stars have changed.
What the episode does do is address the old philosophical question of whether matter transmitters make copies. In the Whoniverse at least, they do.
Unless the whole thing is a simulation, including the changing stars.
Anyway, masterful, glorious work. I’m looking forward to the Christmas special.
Memories of 2003
It's only twelve years ago. Twelve years, and it feels like everyone -- the bulk of MPs, at least -- has forgotten about the dodgy dossier; about shock & awe; about Abu Ghraib and everything that followed.
Because here we are again: our elected representatives are banging spears on shields and baying with the desire to follow a weak, shoddy prime minister to war.
Classic political distraction, of course: things are bad at home (to say nothing of in the government’s party), so let’s have a war to distract the populace; the electorate; the “patient millions/Who put them into power,” as Billy Bragg put it.
So far, so unsurprising. But it’s Labour MPs who really bother me. I thought perhaps we had turned a corner with the election of Jeremy Corbyn. That maybe we would return to being a proper opposition, by actually opposing Tory excesses. And by doing so, show the nation that here is a true alternative to the politics of the last couple of decades; to right-wing versus slightly-less-right-wing. Show the potential for a more peace-loving Britain.
But here they all are, the party grandees, howling for bombs alongside the Tories. I shouldn’t be surprised, of course: it was a Labour government that took us into Iraq twelve years ago. In my defence – and theirs, to some extent – we were deceived , then – them by that dossier, us by them. Millions marched against it,1 but many thought that there must be something to all this talk of us being 45-minutes away from an attack. That the government must know something.
Back then my son was nearly six. When we told him – in an age-appropriate way, as they say – that it looked like there was going to be a war – his first response was, “Will I have to go away?” Those tales of World War II evacuated kids burn deep for a Londoner.
We reassured him that no, the war would be far away, and wouldn’t affect us directly. Two years later we were proved wrong, when the war came to his hometown. 2
And just two weeks ago the current war came to Paris. Does anyone doubt, if our leaders go ahead and escalate this war, that we’ll see it come back to British streets? Maybe London again. Maybe Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast, Glasgow.
More blood on British streets. Blood, which – along with that of the innocents who die in Syria under RAF bombs – will be at least partly on the hands of the MPs who go through the division lobbies with the government tomorrow.
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I was sadly absent from that through having small kids and a visiting aged parent. I was there in spirit. ↩︎
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Looking back I find that I predicted it. I was far from alone, of course. ↩︎
Heaven and Lords
I wouldn't have minded if I had guessed it myself. But one little line in the Guardian Guide prompted me. All it did was make me think of something I hadn't thought of before, but it felt like a spoiler: "The Doctor comes closer than ever before to returning to Gallifrey," or some such.
And there it was: “They” from last week had to be the Time Lords.
But why? Why did they do it? Why put the Doctor through that, just to get him to Gallifrey? And also, how? of course: how can he get to Gallifrey when it’s supposed to be locked away in some pocket universe?
And titling: why was it called “Heaven Sent”?
Great episode, by the way. Best of the season. Indeed, I predict a Hugo.
And I expect we’ll find out some of the answers next week.
Raven and... What?
Well. Well, well well.
Well.
I have to say (and spoilers here for “Face the Raven”, if you haven’t seen it yet): that was companion-exit that guarantees they won’t be able to bring her back.
OK, yes, nothing is forever in Doctor Who, and there are already rumours or suggestions that Clara will be appearing in flashbacks or similar in the next two episodes. But that really felt properly final.
And I have to say, I hope it stays that way. Nothing against Clara, or Jenna Coleman – I think she was a good companion played by a very good actor – but it just feels that they’ve done too much of bringing companions back. Sure, we all love to see them again, but really? She’s gone out with a heroic and tragic last scene. It would cheapen it to bring her back.
Unless there was a very good reason, of course.
It occurs to me: if the planned new spinoff programme, Class, is to be set in and around Coal Hill School, where Clara was teaching: what does her death mean for that, for the characters in it? Presumably some of them will be her students, or teachers who knew her.
Anyway, back to Clara, and the Raven. And maybe her death wish?
I was pleased that she mentioned Danny Pink at the end, because I’ve been thinking that it was strange that neither she nor The Doctor had mentioned him in this season. It seemed that she really hadn’t had a chance go grieve properly – or hadn’t let herself do so.
Though we don’t know how long is supposed to have passed. It could be a year, two, since the events of “Death in Heaven”. Which doesn’t mean she’d have stopped grieving – certainly not that she’d have forgotten him. But she could have got to a place where she could carry on without always thinking of him.
But then there’s her mood this series, her mad drive for more adventures, her carelessness – best shown in this very episode with the way she hung out of the Tardis1
So if we want to psychoanlayse her, we can say that she has spent the last ten episodes (and maybe longer) running away from Danny’s death, from her own feelings about it; or running towards her own eventual death, her sacrifice.
This episode for me was one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. I was considered quite contentious in my family when I said I thought that the current season was the best of New-Who. That led to much discussion of other past seasons, and my eventual acquiescence into the idea that it’s mainly the best because it’s the one that’s happening now. Like my friend Paul said a while back: “My favourite episode of Doctor Who? The next one.”
But I think the truth of it is that it has been a very even series: not great highs (except maybe this very episode) – no “Blink” or “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” or “Father’s Day”. But no real lows, either (arguably the previous episode, but I still think it was worthwhile.) An entire season (so far) of solid, strong episodes, leading to a climax like this – and who knows what will come next?
I note in passing that this reviewer thinks like me.
Anyway. There is much more I could say – like who are the “they” who have kidnapped The Doctor? The obvious answer would be Davros and the Daleks, possibly with help from Missy. That would bookend the season nicely, and make some sense of Ashildr asking for his “Confession Dial”. But that might be too obvious.
But that’s enough for now. Quoth the Raven, “Neverwhere’s all about hidden London, isn’t it?"
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I can’t decide on whether to use the old-school all caps, since it’s an acronym, or the more modern approach of making it a standard word. I wonder: what would Nasa do? Oh. Yes. ↩︎
Sleep and No Raven?
Well, as far as we can tell, this one isn't part one of a two parter. So I guess I should write about it on its own.
I enjoyed it immensely – well, quite a lot – but I just wish sometimes they would take the trouble to come up with good, rational explanations for the events. Relatively simple steps, only needing a few extra words – or different words – in the script, could make these episodes be so much better.
The critical example of a story like this from last season is “Kill the Moon”. As I wrote at that link, they could relatively easily have included a few words that would have made the idea less preposterous. It wouldn’t necessarily be good science, but it would at least be less-ridiculous science than the explanation that was actually given.
So too here, then, with “Sleep No More.” The atmosphere and style of the episode were great. And the plot was fine. It was just the execution of the plot, including in particular the explanation for the problem, that let it down.
Let me explain what I mean. The plot, in summary, was: In found footage a mad scientist tells us the story of some soldiers investigating a space station that has dropped out of communication. The crew have been turned into dust-zombies by a machine that enables them to function on five minutes sleep a day. The explanation for the dust conversion is stupid.
The Doctor and Clara, of course, have arrived on the station and help to investigate. Clara gets sucked into the sleep machine, which means she will become a dust monster too.
Our heroes and the surviving troops escape in the TARDIS, and the mad scientist reveals he is a dust monster and is spreading the infection via the very recording we’re watching.
As I write that I realise that the whole Clara/infection thing wasn’t resolved, and nor, of course, was the infection via radio business (it reminded me slightly of Snow Crash, incidentally). So maybe they will revisit it, next week or later.
But the ostensible explanation – before we got the radio part from the mad scientist – was that somehow the sleep-compression machine caused the sleep in the corner of your eyes to – what, grow sentient and consume humans, generating more of itself in the process? It’s hard even to explain what they were getting at.
Yet all they had to do was to say it was an alien intelligence that hade got into the mad scientist’s head and convinced him that helping it to spread was the right thing. then even have the sleep-machines infecting people via nanotechnology.
The aliens could even be cousin-species of the Vashta Nerada, as there’s a certain similarity.
Of course, that way we’d lose the radio-transmission-based spread, which was a nice touch too. So maybe nanotech that is quiescent until activated by the code sent in the transmssion.
Either way, it doesn’t take a lot of thought to come up with an idea that doesn’t break the story, but which also doesn’t jerk the viewer out of their suspension of disbelief.
And don’t get me started on the Star Trek-style powered orbit.
In my family we have concluded that what the show needs is, like UNIT, a Scientific Advisor.
Invasion and Inversion
I thought of a couple of alternative titles for this: "Old Enough to be Your Messiah." (I'll bet that played well in parts of America.) "The Basil & Petronella Show." "Who's Gonna Make the Violins?" But for consistency with my other posts. I'm sticking with this.
This was a great pair of episodes. True, some will have found it hard to understand what was going on in the first episode; and true also, the whole Zygon plot might not have entirely made sense (why, in particular, do they have electric zappy powers now, and why does that turn people into sparking wire wool?) But the overall mood, and tone, and writing, were fantastic.
Not to mention the fanservice. The references to Harry Sullivan; the portrait of the first Doctor over the safe; “Five Rounds Rapid!” (Which, I discover, is the title of Nicholas Courtney’s autobiography.) I Loved it all.
This season feels to me like it’s really solid. There are no real highs: no “Blink”, no “The Empty Child” or “Father’s Day”. But there have been no really weak episodes yet either.
On second watching I caught an interesting snippet. When the Doctor is telling Zygella why he didn’t press the big button, he says he “let Clara Oswald get into [his] head.” Then he says, “she doesn’t leave.” Maybe that’ll be the big secret reveal of this season: Clara doesn’t leave after all.
No, I realise that can’t be so, as official BBC announcements have been made. But it was an interesting change from the heavy-handed foreshadowing of her departure that we’ve seen. Clara has been the Doctor’s – and our – companion for a long time now, and it’ll be strange for all of us to adjust to someone new.
I loved the Doctor’s speech – soliloquy, you might say – that reinstated the ceasefire. It’s his statement of Doctoriness.
Still wondering if there’s a big thing for this season. I mean, apart from Clara leaving. It has to be something to do with hybrids of some kind – I noticed that the second part didn’t use that word, though the first did. The Osgoods could be said to be a hybrid, but I can’t see them coming back before the end of this run. There’s the Dalek/Time Lord thing, which will have to play out at some point.
Then there’s the Minister of War – which could just be a throwaway name like the Nightmare Child; but I think it was placed too specifically for that. And Lady Me, or Ashildr. I fully expect to see her again.
I expect we’ll have to wait for the closing two-parter, “Heaven Sent”/“Hell Bent” to find out.
But before that we’ve got “Sleep No More” on Saturday. I don’t know if it’s a two-parter with the one after, “Face the Raven”, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (Books 2015, 9)
The pages, how they turn. I'm sure I've said that before of JK Rowling's work, but not in public, it seems. Amusing to note that The Silkworm was my number 10 last year.
Plenty of Robin in this one, and it’s probably the best of the three. Certainly better than the last one.
Strangest thing about it is the music. By which I mean: the title is taken from a song by Blue Öyster Cult, and quotes from them precede most of the chapters (some chapters have titles, and those are the titles of BÖC songs).
Now, I had no idea that Patti Smith wrote some lyrics for BÖC, but apparently she did1
Still on a musical note, in passing, one of the ancillary characters roadies for a band who are called Death Cult. Since JK Rowling is about the same age as me, and since she obviously pays attention to music, I would expect her to know that The Cult used to be known as Death Cult, and before that as Southern Death Cult. But perhaps you had to read the music papers in the 80s to know about that kind of stuff.2
Anyway, the Death Cult here have nothing to do with either the famous Cult, nor the Blue Öyster one.
The ending is a tad unsatisfying, as it leaves a number of things unresolved – which is fine, as there will no doubt be more books – and doesn’t really give us enough time post-denoument to decompress with the characters.
Still, highly recommended, as long as you’re not put off by gruesome scenes.